VOL TRANSCONTINENTAL AMERICAN AIRLINES DOUGLAS DC-3 AVIATION DES ANNÉES 1940 85094 Xx
Video from the channel PeriscopeFilm II about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 25:13. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.
What it shows
Period American Airlines film dedicated to its "flagships," the airline's airliners. It opens with a review of transport in North America: travel on foot, the canoe, the wagon, the railroad and the joining of the coasts with the golden spike, the automobile that took 63 days from New York to San Francisco, and the Kitty Hawk flight. It then follows a flight from Chicago to New York. It shows how mail and baggage are loaded, how the stewardess greets passengers, how the engines start and how the aircraft taxis to the runway and takes off into the wind. From the air you see the Chicago shoreline, Detroit, the Ambassador Bridge to Canada and Niagara Falls, which the captain circles so everyone can see it. A pilot explains to a couple how radio beam navigation works. Scenes follow of the Mercury sleeper plane between New York and Los Angeles and of the Southerner departing Los Angeles. The film closes with several dramatized scenes of businessmen and a booking agency.
When and where it was filmed
It was filmed across American Airlines' network, with scenes at the Chicago, New York and Los Angeles airports. It includes aerial shots of Washington, Boston, Andrew Jackson's Hermitage near Nashville, El Paso with the Rio Grande, and some Native American pictographs near Blythe, California. The film attributes the route's radio beacons to the Civil Aeronautics Authority.
Background
The film presents a network covering 21 states and connecting with the Yankee Clippers and China Clippers. In Chicago there were 96 flights arriving and departing every 24 hours, and the aircraft were climate-controlled before departure. Each passenger could carry 40 pounds of baggage free of charge. The pilot explains that the radio beacons emit a continuous signal and that, if the aircraft drifts off course, the signal breaks into dots and dashes depending on the side. Aircraft flying in opposite directions fly at even-thousand altitudes one way and odd-thousand the other, and none departs without a flight plan approved by the meteorologists. The stewardesses are presented as registered nurses. Between New York and Chicago there were three routes with interchangeable tickets, one of them nonstop in under five hours. The film emphasizes the time the aircraft saves the business traveler and the advantages for vacations.